


Babysitting in a War (is no one's idea of fun)

by AngeNoir



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 00:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5948925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy stares down Colonel Phillips. She has too much to offer, too much to do, and babysitting an industrialist, no matter how necessary he was to the war effort, was <em>not</em> how she wanted to spend the next few weeks.</p><p>They end up spending much more time together than a few weeks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Babysitting in a War (is no one's idea of fun)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilly_C](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilly_C/gifts).



> Hopes that this works for you!

Peggy Carter folded her arms and stared Colonel Phillips down. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” she asked in her most courteous tone.

Colonel Phillips leaned forward at his desk. “You heard me,” he growled, but she had been around enough soldiers by now to know that he wasn’t feeling exactly easy with what he was saying – which gave her the advantage.

“I could have sworn you said I was supposed to be babysitting a civilian who has been notorious for poking his nose where it doesn’t belong, when I have _actual_ duties that I’m needed for,” Peggy said, and then belatedly tacked on, “Sir.”

Colonel Phillips let out a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. The sad thing was, he was the best commanding officer she could hope for. She’d personally saved his life in the field, practically by accident since she was supposed to be a codebreaker, but her steadiness and strength under fire had made him ask her to be his secretary. She’d countered by asking to be allowed to be his second in command. After proving her worth on the shooting range, the ring, on paper, and to him multiple times – something she had resigned herself to having to do, when no other of her male counterparts needed to prove their worth so vigorously – he agreed.

He knew her worth. So why he was doing this was beyond her understanding. Howard Stark might be supplying the army with weapons, might be one of the most brilliant engineers they had, but he was still a civilian in the middle of a war zone, and she had no time or patience to be spared for him.

“I need my best soldier on him protecting him,” Colonel Phillips finally growled. “He’s come to look for recruits for some project the brass thinks will give us an edge in the war. I need you to make sure he lives, because you can be damned sure someone will try and stop him.”

Peggy narrowed her eyes at Colonel Phillips and said tightly, “As you wish, sir. But I heartily disagree with the entire situation.”

*

Within an hour of arriving, Howard Stark managed to say the wrong thing to the wrong person and ended up with a black eye and split lip before she could snap the officer back down and remove Stark from the situation.

She managed to refrain from saying ‘I told you so’ to Colonel Phillips, but only just.

*

On the plane to America, where the project would take place, Stark tried repeatedly to entice her into an amorous relationship. When he failed decisively, he turned his attention to the stewardesses. Peggy bit her tongue and glared daggers into Stark’s back as he sauntered away to the back of the plane.

Protect him indeed. The man threw himself headlong into problems that could have been avoided had he simply had the common sense of a mayfly. Peggy did her best not to grit her teeth at the smug smile Stark wore once he came back from the back of the plane and prayed that the mission was completed as quickly and concisely as possible. They already had the scientist, Erskine, and the resources for him to recreate what he had done in Germany. All she needed to do was make sure Stark didn’t die before he managed to handle the mechanical side of the equation. Once they were on the ground and SSR agents were handing Stark a file, talking to him rapidly about the science and procedure that she caught only the surface meanings of it, she followed the whirlwind that was Stark to SSR’s headquarters in New York.

She met Dr. Erskine, and was charmed by his quiet self-assurance. He, like herself, was highly aware of the danger of Hydra and the Nazis, more so than their American compatriots who were still treating the whole venture as something abstract, something like a challenge or game. She found herself sitting at Dr. Erskine’s desk, sipping tea and watching the chaos that seemed to characterize Stark.

Of course, Stark was the one who introduced her to Steve Rogers.

She still wasn’t sure whether to thank him or slap him for that.

*

“Do you really think it will work?”

Peggy looked up from her paperwork, lifting an eyebrow. It was late at night, the night before Steve was slotted to undergo the procedure. Dr. Erskine was probably giving Steve a pep talk, but how she got to bolster a drunk Stark…

But that was unfair. The amount of work Howard had poured into this, his absolute zeal and almost childlike enthusiasm… somewhere along the line, Stark had blurred into Howard, and she hadn’t really even noticed the change until she sat here, the lamplight soft, Howard leaning forward, forearms braced on his knees, drink clasped loosely in his hand, collar unbuttoned, face unshaven, looking to her for some level of reassurance.

She set her pen down on her papers and met his gaze. “I think,” she said quietly, “if anyone could get it to work, it is you and Dr. Erskine.”

Howard let out a small chuckle and dropped his head, letting it hang low between his shoulders. “By all rights it shouldn’t work, you know,” he murmured. “I don’t think you realize how often Abraham simply told me to have faith. I’m a man of science, Pegs. I’m not someone who has faith in something other than what I built, and what I built… I dunno. Steve’s a good man, a good guy. I’m – Peggy, I’m terrified.”

She groped for the right words, the right phrases to help this man who was looking for something, anything. “So am I, Howard. We all are. We have no other options, no other time to prepare someone for this procedure. It’s all or nothing. But I have faith in you, and your brain, in Dr. Erskine, and his ability, and Steve, and his heart. I can think of nothing else except a good outcome, because there’s nothing else I’ll allow to cloud my mind at this juncture.”

Howard lifted his head, and his gaze cut her to her very core, searched out something inside her that was echoed in his own being. Slowly, he nodded.

“That’s gonna have to be good enough for me, then,” he said quietly, leaning back in the chair and knocking back the rest of the drink.

When no more words were forthcoming, she inclined her head at him and left him with his thoughts.

*

She had never even considered the fact that the person who really needed protecting was not Howard Stark, her charge, but Abraham Erskine.

She couldn’t quite forgive Steve for knocking her out of the way of the cab, but figured that he could make it up to her somehow.

*

(She shouldn’t have let her jealousy get the best of her.)

(She did anyway.)

(And those who said it wasn't ladylike to shoot a gun had obviously never had the pleasure of shooting at the source of their frustration, even if her bullets ricocheted.)

"Did you really have to shoot at him?" Howard asked later, a pen clenched between his teeth because he'd forgotten he had stuffed one behind his ear.

She shrugged languidly, watching Howard work feverishly on body armor that wouldn't overly hamper Steve's movement. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"He's a young guy, Pegs. He's gonna sow his wild oats." Impishly, Howard looked up at her, his eyes dancing. "I've sown my fair share."

"You've sown enough to feed a nation," she said, a bit sourly, but her eyes were warm, and she chuckled as Howard threw his head back and laughed loud and long.

*

“Who is this?” she asked, keeping her voice as perfectly even as possible, even as she held her gun on the stranger.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Peggy! That’s my guy. My butler. A guy like me should have a butler, right?”

She turned and raised an eyebrow at Howard. “I thought you were stateside,” she said coolly.

“I wish,” Howard grumbled, ignoring the fact that her gun was out and that the lanky man was still frozen to walk between them to the small table in the tent. “I picked this guy up in a camp. Sent his wife to the states. We have a problem.”

Peggy had been through enough with Howard, had had his help on multiple missions with the Howling Commandos. She trusted him, and for all that his judgement was suspect when dealing with a pretty dame, he was deadly serious when it came to the war.

They had become a pretty unstoppable team, between her strategies and his genius, and even if they weren’t always on the front lines with Steve and Dum-Dum and Gabriel, they were normally right behind. Leaning over the papers Howard pulled out, she read through the encrypted message and frowned.

“Are we sure?” she asked slowly.

Howard looked up at her, eyes dark and hollow.

“Well, then,” Peggy murmured, ignoring the man leaving the tent – she’d never caught his name. “We best get going.”

Howard twisted his lips into a crooked smile. “I’ll bring the plane around,” he said lightly, and she smiled.

There were few things she could thank others for, but she could thank Colonel Phillips for pairing her with this insufferable rogue.


End file.
